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pianoloverus
Yikes! 10000 Post Club Member
Registered: 05/29/01
Posts: 20371
Loc: New York City

Originally Posted By: Rod Verhnjak

I am always amazed how much a chair or cabinet can be worth on the Antique Road Show but pianos with beautiful wood work are not valued for their cabinets.

That's why I was surprised by the "no" answer on another thread when I asked if anyone ever purchased an old beautifully cased piano with the case restored but the insides not working. Maybe people are embarrassed to say they bought a piano 100% for the furniture.

Or maybe for a grand, the insides(strings, plate, soundboard etc) would have to be redone also because a beautifully refinished case with ugly insides would look terrible. At that point, having redone everything except the action, one might as well redo that an have a playable piano.

There is nothing to indicate that the instrument has been restored or not, other than the dampers look new and the keys are in fine shape. It's been used for performances, apparently in Texas where it is now located, but perhaps also when it was at the Victoria & Albert. One would have to hope that the soundboard hasn't cracked or sunk, because replacing that might risk damaging the marquetry.

The marquetry does appear to be of very fine quality and uniformly distributed around the piano, but it is hard to credit their statement that this is the finest example of its kind in the world. Maybe you can argue that it is the most extensive example, but plenty of other 19th century pianos have exquisite marquetry as well. There were dozens of examples like this available at Maximiliaan's House of Pianos in NY just a few years ago, but I don't know if he is still in business. At least if you bought from him, you knew you were getting an instrument that had been restored musically, and $100,000 was a very high price for one of his art case pianos.

If their price is any indication, maybe a fair price for the piano is somewhere between 300-750k. It certainly would be less than one million, especially considering that the most expensive piano sold was John Lennon's Steinway upright for 2.1 million.